Wildfires in California are prompting utility companies to shut down portions of the grid during times of high risk. That is giving a boost to renewable energy and storage companies like Tesla, Sunrun, and Bloom Energy.
Drawing on the latest national data available on new electricity sources, 2017 may have brought more sluggish gains in total new power plant capacity to the US than it had the year before, but it also brought another, more positive outcome: a notable surge in the nation’s distributed solar generation.
Originally published on San Diego Loves Green by Roy L. Hales Edited by author on 7/11/2013 On page 4 of an Edison Electric Institute (EEI) booklet called Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail, “Distributed Energy Resources” (meaning Rooftop solar) is identified as “the largest near-term threat … [continued]
This post originally appeared on ILSR’s Energy Self-Reliant States blog. Just north of Delavan, Wisconsin, is Dan Osborne’s nursery farm. Where you once found a bean field now sit 80 solar panels on 100 tracking towers, generating renewable power for over 125 homes. It’s a small, but successful community-owned energy harvest. … [continued]
While technology has helped change the economics of electricity production (in favor of renewables and distributed generation), this new dynamic can as easily be controlled by the incumbent utilities as the old paradigm of centralized fossil fuel power generation.
The solution to the variability of wind power is more wind.
Solyndra was the very first of the renewable energy companies funded through the (newly renewable energy-friendly) Department of Energy under Secretary Chu, who guaranteed a $535 million loan so Solyndra could build a factory to make its innovative cylindrical CIGS thin film solar modules. That factory is now due online … [continued]
